The Girl of the Lake Read online

  “You’re an EMT?”

  “Forest ranger.” She pulled a badge out of her canvas purse, punched my shoulder with it, hard, showed me the gun in there, too, put it all back.

  I said, “So forest rangers are cops?”

  She shrugged to say, Not exactly. “But often first on the scene.”

  Inside, no terrible smells. Part of the wallboard in the bedroom had been sawed rudely and removed.

  She said, “That’s the cleaners did that.”

  “Thorough.”

  “Listen, Mr. Autumn, my sense is that the bank is pretty motivated here. Try a figure on me.”

  “It’s Autun.”

  “Ah-Toon.”

  “Ten grand.”

  “No, seriously.”

  “Twenty-five?”

  “You’ll only get one shot with them. What do they care? But they need their expenses covered.”

  “Thirty-five.”

  “You’ve really got it? Cash? Can get it?”

  “Yes, really.”

  She said, “It was a love triangle.”

  The bank and Bonnie and a couple of local lawyers and I closed four weeks later, and the little sweet crime scene was mine.

  “You know what happened in that place . . . ” one of the bankers said the second my signature was dry.

  FIRST THING, I HAD the wall repaired where the cleaners had had to remove the gore-soaked Sheetrock. Otherwise, there was no particular sense of death there. Bonnie knew a carpenter who’d known her ex-husband, was the impression I got going into it, but while he ate the little lunch I made him, we talked and I learned that he himself, in fact, was Bonnie’s ex. I said she seemed like a good person, just a pleasantry.

  He said, “Don’t fuck her whatever you do.”

  “Oh, I have no . . .”

  “Don’t get me wrong. She can do whatever she wants. I’m just saying, she’ll break you, that’s what I’m saying. My God, the legs on that woman.”

  He did a masterful job on the Sheetrock, even taped and primed it for me, several return trips, and all for seventy-five bucks.

  THEN IT WAS BACK to Boston to teach, fall semester, hard to go back to the big city. But finally it was December. I’d been thinking fondly about my little cottage for months, the peace of it, the rocks, the ocean, the price: I’d gotten the place for probably a tenth its true value. I didn’t spread the word, however, never told the story—I worried that if the murder thing got widely known, potential girlfriends (my ex, Charlene, had left me for a job across the country and then, after a few years long distance, for a colleague who played guitar, sad) might not want to come along on the weekend dates I envisioned. But there’d been no weekends for me—I was chair of the department during that stretch, sixteen-hour days. My chairmanship ended with the semester, however, and then my sabbatical began. I sublet my apartment to a fussy grad student who would take perfect care of Charlene’s ancient cat—no moving that distinguished animal—and loaded the old Civic with everything I’d need, not much. My idea was to do three things: read books, practice my amateur painting, not die of loneliness. The study of tidal rockweed reestablishment after winter storms, despite my sabbatical proposal, would be number four, if at all.

  I had no phone reception of any kind on the rocks there—my rocks!—a tumbled promontory bounded on all sides by Nature Conservancy land, paradise. And of course no Internet. I could have added a dish to the side of the house and got some coverage, but the point was not to have coverage. And losing all of that all of a sudden was like withdrawing from crack, or whatever the kids are playing with these days. I paced the house, noticed every little noise, got my paints out, set up my easel, stared out to the ocean through the picture window an about-to-be murderer had stared through the other way, his heart pounding, at a guess.

  Third day there, Christmas Eve, and Bonnie LeDoux pulled up in her mini pickup truck, surprise. “Welcome Wagon,” she called when I stuck my head out.

  Inside, she admired the new Sheetrock. “That guy does great work,” she said.

  “Your ex?”

  “Aw, he wasn’t supposed to say. I just want to keep it professional, you know? Your real estate agent? No life of her own? Only your life matters?”

  “He also said I shouldn’t fuck you.”

  She went pink in a rapid flush that ran right down into her décolletage. “Oh, that rat!”

  I kept my eyes firmly on her handsome face, said, “I liked him.”

  “Everyone likes him. I like him. I love him. He just says stuff like that. Undermining stuff. I hope you didn’t listen to him. Ugh, that came out all wrong. Listen. Here’s your welcome basket. Made it up myself. Just now. A little rrreposado tequila, some elderflower liqueur, also limes. Also cucumbers, I hope not too suggestive! Except of summer. Cucumber margaritas.”

  My loneliness fled. I said, “I have salt.”

  “We can sit out in our lawn chairs on the rocks in our insulated coveralls and contemplate eternity.”

  “I don’t have insulated coveralls.”

  “I brought some for you.”

  “I don’t have lawn chairs, either.”

  Before long we were lounging in her lawn chairs out on the far point of my rocks, the freezing offshore breeze pushing our hoods firmly onto the backs of our heads, drawstrings batting our faces, huge seasonal waves charging up against the rocks, high tide, whitecaps retreating, king eiders and common goldeneyes and black guillemots paddling peaceably amid the mayhem. Those coveralls were insanely warm. And the drinks were rays of sunshine. Bonnie, too, in and out of my peripheral vision like a lost memory, intoxicating.

  “It’s your salt,” she said every time I sighed, two drinks, three, four, not terribly strong, but who can tell with rrreposado? Bonnie just kept leaning out of her lawn chair, adding one ingredient at a time to her giant backwoods Thermos, shaking ’em up good, pouring me fresh jelly jars full.

  We watched the ocean, the birds, the high-cruising clouds.

  “Where do they go?” I said at length, philosophy overtaking me, the sun hitting the low scrub behind us.

  Bonnie knew just what I meant. She thought a while and said, “They go everywhere. Molecules far and wide. Matter can’t be destroyed. You die and you’re all broken into irreducible bits and then transformed into the next thing.”

  “Your husband said something very complimentary about your legs . . .”

  “I used to squeeze the breath out of that little squirt, that’s all. Like trying to get blood out of a cornhusk. Or at least a little juice.”

  “And you’re a forest ranger?”

  “It’s seasonal, doll. You’d be surprised how much I know about deer populations, though.”

  “Driveway plowing?”

  “Who do you think plowed yours, city boy?”

  I hadn’t even thought of it. I’d just driven right in, neat berms of snow both sides. We laughed and laughed over that. She took my hand and held on, a crushing grip across the abyss, lovely.

  “Happy housewarming,” she said.

  INSIDE LATER, AFTER A couple of hours of increasingly libidinous and rumbustious lovemaking, I cooked us up some food. I’d stopped at Drummond Pier for my traditional huge lobster, and it was enough, even for two large and famished people, also a bag of smallish potatoes, also green beans, also a pound of sweet butter from the honor fridge at the farm up the road. We talked about sex, the way new lovers do, licking butter from our fingers, little compliments, daring phrases, slugs of margarita, insatiable.

  She said, “I liked when you carried me around.”

  I said, “I think my hips are dislocated.”

  “I could squeeze harder, believe me. That was like, I don’t know, a five.”

  “We’re really great together, Bonnie LeDoux.”

  “That was me, Ah-Toon. I’m really great. You, you’ve got a ways to go.”

  We listened to the waves a long time. Finally, I said, “Just something about it.”

  And Bonni
e said, “I know. Doing it right in the room where they got shot.”

  “Just something about the actual stakes we’re all facing. That whole walls have to be replaced.”

  “Like, eight bullets each. Dude had to reload in the middle.”

  “Or maybe he had one of those double magazines.”

  “No, he reloaded. Took his sweet time, too. Lined the shells up on the kitchen counter there. Sixteen altogether.”

  “And just coldly shot his former love!”

  “And her boyfriend. Then drove to the state police barracks and turned himself in. Forty to life.” Bonnie sucked a lobster leg clean, stuck a potato in her mouth whole, then green beans, those capable long hands at work, so alive! She chewed contemplatively, her beautiful mouth, looked at me long, then away. She said, “I’ve never been in love before.”

  “Well. That’s what murder will do for you.”

  “All those splattered thoughts.”

  “I’d hate to be one of the cleaners.”

  “They’re busier than you think. Motels, lobster boats, campsites.”

  “Your cheeks are so red from the wind.”

  She softened, just something I hadn’t seen in her, the feminine side. She said, “The legs on this girl.”

  “You want me to say I love you, too.”

  She laughed, just ha-ha. Then, “Only if you mean it.”

  “Okay, I do.”

  She said, “We called it the murder cottage. Back at the office, I mean. I should have told you that.”

  “We can get a sign made for over the door: MURDER COTTAGE.”

  “Murder Cottage. I like that. Beats, like, Rocky Roost.”

  “Or Bonnie View.”

  “I like that you say we.”

  “We, then.”

  “Come let me crush you like a bug.”

  “But you’ve got a gun in your purse.”

  “Ah, guns are like lipstick, these days, an accessory.”

  “That’s no way to talk in Murder Cottage.”

  “Your voice is so low.”

  “I do love you. I don’t mean to sound surprised. I just really do. Whatever it means this early in the game, I do.” I did.

  She thought a long minute, said, “It means this.” She gestured to the two of us, the cottage, our coveralls on the floor, the new drywall, not a sign of Christmas anywhere, that thing that was happening elsewhere and without us.

  “It means this,” I agreed.

  “Plus all the emails all fall.”

  “Those were good emails.”

  “It’s all in the subtext. Even early in the game, you creep.”

  We cleaned up a little, ran the lobster shells down to the ocean, threw them in, then made the short journey back to the cottage and bed, made love to the sound of the crashing waves, the increasing wind, sixteen shots from a phantom handgun, then thirty-two, then sixty-four, then exponential everything unto millions, our link to eternity, the smell of lobster and butter and ocean and sky and every human effluent, and kisses and second tries and new ideas and confidences and snuggling and dozy intervals then at it again: life.

  Princesa

  A FAMOUS ACTRESS WAS supposed to arrive. Everyone Robert and Phillipe met found a way to mention her: Tessa! She was shooting a film across the island with the great director Pedro Almodóvar, whom Phillipe claimed to admire, no one Robert had ever heard of. The hotel driver who picked them up at little Ibiza Airport talked about her the whole way, mostly in Spanish superlatives, beside himself with the pleasure of her, that such a luminary would grace the Royal Mediterranean Hotel, kissing his fingers to the air: Tessa Embrodar!

  Phillipe caught the bug immediately. He’d heard of the actress one way or another. Shame on Robert for not knowing Tessa! Was the attitude. The actress had been in a dozen European films, none Robert had ever heard of. But she was in that Harrison Ford movie, too, Phillipe kept saying. They’d seen it on a double date when Robert had first met Julia, who’d adored it! What was it called? Robert had no interest, Harrison Ford or no, and certainly no wish to be thinking about Julia, not on this trip. The name Tessa Embrodar meant nothing to him whatsoever, even repeated a number of times by guests and hotel employees alike in various faulty accents around the buildings and grounds as Robert and Phillipe toured the place and were introduced to simply everyone (none of that all-American anonymity here): Tessa Embrodar is coming! Robert was superior with Phillipe about it—some obscure actress in some second-rate Harrison Ford thriller, not even one of the big ones, give him a break. They made a gay-straight joke of it between them, he repeating the actress’s name in mock awe, Phillipe shaking his head in not-quite-mock disgust at Robert’s geeky philistinism.

  Phillipe’s aunt was an executive travel consultant for the likes of Mercedes-Benz and Berkshire Hathaway and the Saudi royal family and had secured for her favorite nephew this golden sojourn. Double occupancy and Phillipe with no boyfriend at the moment, unheard of, thus bereaved-and-boring Robert. Robert had had to look up Ibiza. It was one of the Balearic Islands, in the Mediterranean off of Valencia, Spain. And now that he was here he had to admit it was spectacular. Plus, they were paying less than ten percent of the standard price because a castle suite had come empty at the last minute. Suddenly they were jet-setters.

  Robert continued to complain—that was the game—but he was very satisfied with the Royal Mediterranean, extremely pleased, in fact, especially with everyone else paying something on the order of fifty thousand American bucks—a castle and vineyards and olive groves once owned by the Contessa of somewhere or other, attentive maids and obsequious bellboys and unobtrusive waiters and insistent concierges everywhere all but brushing your teeth for you, multiple spas and restaurants and swimming pools and tennis courts and beaches and boating and archery and surf lessons all included. How many massages could you take, how many high colonics refuse? Robert and the late Julia had spent their honeymoon all those twenty years ago at a Motel Six on Lake Erie near Buffalo, where she was from. Phillipe (he’d been Phillip until after college), well, he’d gone to the big city, dabbled in acting, secured sugar daddies one after the next. Or at least that’s how he told it—famous rich Republican closet cases who supposedly lavished him with gifts—though he wasn’t exactly rolling in cash.

  Ah: magnificently manicured gardens and walled walkways meandering down to the Mediterranean as viewed from their three private patios or from the great windows in their separate and equal bedrooms (massive round beds with canopies, glorious baths); the old castle and village visible from their “drawing room,” which was a beamed expanse of foyer complete with astonishingly vast and real medieval tapestries, huge windows, the vineyards and hills and horses and scrubbed cattle out there in ancient pastures, the stone fortress wall probably seven feet thick on that side, vines growing right into the room, not just antique but ancient furniture carefully buffed and polished, olive wood crackling in the fireplace tended by their various valets, their clothes folded and ironed and hung every time they turned their backs, their shoes left in military precision and polish in the stone stairwell, their dirty laundry attended to daily, cuckoos calling outside all afternoon, nightingales all evening, scent of flowers opening at dawn and eventide from bowers everywhere, cocktails after breakfast if you weren’t careful to say no, which Phillipe wasn’t always, in fact wasn’t ever, rare bottles of wine at every meal.

  THE ACTRESS NO DOUBT gained the more attention by being the only person her age who would grace the place, certainly the only single woman. There were small children and a handful of teens, most of them traveling as au pairs to the very few young heterosexual couples. The rest of the clientele was well into retirement years, all wattles and jewelry and tall coifs and powders. After that a handful of gay men in long-term pairs, but Phillipe seemed undeterred: in his world love and commitment didn’t preclude sexual adventuring, and he meant to make himself available.

  You were seated arbitrarily at dinner each night with other couples, whic
h is what Phillipe and Robert were apparently perceived to be. The first night it was almost unbearable, three ancient husbands with their three ancient wives all dressed formally, a long discussion of international interest rates, much of it in German, Robert in torn cargo shorts, Philippe in Italian leather trousers and waistcoat.

  The next day after tennis together and then with various partners (a certain gaiety descending), and after a long swim in the warm blue Mediterranean—groomed hotel beach, islands out there—Robert and Phillipe climbed in the horse-drawn hotel “conveyance” and visited the expensive village. The great church ran a high-end thrift shop, and there, to Robert’s protests, Philippe outfitted the two of them for castle life: tailored shirts, pegged trousers, suede loafers. The second night they felt almost refined, joined the talk about global warming, heartily blamed America as the others were doing, brought China and India and eastern Europe in for some inspection, or Robert did, anyway—he was a laboratory manager at Rochester Institute of Technology and knew from climate change. The respect he was accorded as a scientist was like nothing he’d ever felt at home, where his career had not gone exactly as he might have hoped. But people made assumptions when you were able to afford castle life. He fell into a resurrected, youthful confidence, waxed expert to eager ears.

  One of their fellow diners seemed to fall in love with Phillipe over dessert, gripped his arm, gazed at him almost teary eyed, old codger who let it be known he owned a string of polo ponies, also a shipping line, said the hotel reminded him of his home—he wanted to show Phillipe the horse farm he kept in the countryside, kept speaking of gifts.

  “Go with him,” Robert whispered. “You could use a pony.”

  “You would trade me for a Rolex,” Phillipe spat.

  “I’d trade you for a cigarette, and I don’t even smoke.”

  But the old stud fell asleep during the cheese course, was rolled away in a custom wheelchair.

  THE HOTEL OWNED BOATS, and the evening champagne cruise turned out to be a hoot, as Phillipe wrote his aunt, though in fact it was a trial, he having to dance with one noble nitwit after the next. Even Robert danced with Phillipe. It wasn’t like there were available women.